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An interview with Program Director and Product Manager for IBM’s WebSphere
Application Server portfolio, Walt Noffsinger

Hi Walt, Thanks for joining me today. Can you tell us a little bit about
your background and what you’re working on at IBM today?

Sure, I’ve been with IBM for almost 11 years now. I am currently a Product
Manager for the WebSphere Application Server portfolio-- the middleware that
serves as the foundation for our customers’ web infrastructures. I help
determine the portfolio’s evolution – working with Development, Sales and
Marketing – to ensure our customers’ needs are met and that we’re anticipating
their future needs.

Prior to this position, I managed IBM Printer Systems Division's (PSD)
worldwide software business where I was responsible for the software products
at the core of IBM's print and output architecture.

Before IBM, I was VP of Marketing and Product Management for Napersoft (a
document composition software company), VP of Product Management for a
healthcare software provider, and Director of Marketing for Pitney Bowes
Software Systems.

Can you explain what is new and exciting about the recently announced
WebSphere Application Server Tooling Bundles?

WN:There are two great new things WAS developers
should be aware of.First, we are
offering Eclipse Server Adapters for WAS v7 and WAS v8 as part of the WebSphere
Development Tools for Eclipse package.These will be available on November 18th along with our current free download
of WAS for Developers.

There
are supported versions of these downloads which will be available as well.

Secondly,
on Nov 18th, our WAS and WAS ND (v7 and v8) will offer purchase options that
include a complete tooling package that can be used in conjunction with the
servers purchased package.For a small increment
over the current WAS prices, customers ordering these new bundles get both the
new Eclipse Server Adapters (as part of the WebSphere Development Tools for
Eclipse package) as well as the #1 rated Rational Application Developer
(RAD).RAD is the premier IDE for WAS
and offers developers robust capabilitiesfor building applications via varied programming models available in the
WAS.The idea for offering simple and
comprehensive tools is to help facilitate and streamline varied development
environments when building apps for WebSphere.

How is this offering going to make things easier/better for
developers?

WN:On November 18th, Eclipse developers will have
free and frictionless access to WAS Eclipse Server Adapters in addition to the
WAS for developers.This will ensure
their desktops have the environments they need to develop and easily deploy to
WAS production infrastructure.

In
addition, for customers using our premier RAD tool, they will now have access
to WAS / RAD / WebSphere Development Tools for Eclipse.These bundles will be available for a small
increment in price over the current WAS and WAS ND standalone products.The bundles will allow usage of RAD and/or
Eclipse Server Adapters for developing applications that will be run on newly
acquired WAS production licenses.This
greatly streamlines the process for obtaining tooling and runtime environments
for new WebSphere applications.

Our
intent is to make sure developers have easy access to tools of choice when it
comes to developing for WAS environments.Whether they are working in a strictly Eclipse-based environment or
whether they have a more advanced IDE like RAD, developers can now more easily
obtain environments and quickly become productive.

If
they require IBM support for those WAS desktops, they can purchase it
optionally.This same model will be
available for the IBM WebSphere Application Server for Developers- Tools
Edition for Eclipse.Folks
can download both for free and when needed, purchase support.

How do you install the bundles? What is
the process?

WN:The bundles will be available as a zip install or via a mechanism called
the IBM Install Manager.Details will be available on November 18.

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